On the AlMaghrib Forums, someone posted that there was a young sister who wanted to take one of the classes.  She “wanted to attend Love Notes but couldn’t afford it. She saved up her lunch money for 2 months and brought me a bag of loose change worth around $40. We gave her a scholarship for the remaining amount but subhanAllah I will never forget how eager she was. I sure hope she packed her lunch during that time!”

SubhanAllah, and we sometimes think twice before simply sharing seminars and institutions of ‘Ilm to others?

I know a lot of students that go to Al-Huda School from places that are several hours away. Not just for a day or two, but for the entire school year. They do this not because they enjoy getting up really early and having to basically go on a roadtrip every day, but because they and their parents understand the value of an Islamic education. When Al-Huda was in an emergency situation and close to shutting down back in the day, I recall hearing the story of a child who came crying to Imam Safi with a coin jar containing all of his personal savings and asking, “Would this help to keep Al-Huda?” Such is the love of many for their institutions of knowledge…

There are so many great but yet unassuming people out there in the world that are treading their path of knowledge. I hope we never become so complacent that we no longer prioritize the seeking of Islamic knowledge and guiding others to it as well.

May Allah make us among the sincere students of knowledge. Ameen…

Abu Darda’ said, “I heard the Messenger of Allah (S) say: ‘Whoever travels a path seeking knowledge, Allah will place him on a path to Paradise. The angels lower their wings for him pleased with what he is doing. The creatures in the heavens and earth seek forgiveness for him, even the fish in the water.” (Imam Ahmad, Abu Dawood, at-Tirmidhi, ibn Majah)

Islamic activists, never forget yourself in the midst of volunteering. You must work on the spiritual void in you as well.

Practical solution: Begin with the essentials. Pray Fajr and Isha’ Salah in congregation at the Masjid regularly for 1, 2, 3 months, and you will start to notice the difference. The Prophet (salAllāhu ‘alayhi wa sallam) promised that if you can catch both of those, it is as if you were in worship the entire night.

“If people knew the reward in praying Fajr and Isha’ in congregation, they would go to the Masjid even if they had to crawl” – Prophetic Hadith in Bukhari & Muslim.

May Allāh (subhānahu wa ta’ālā) make it easy for us to follow this Sunnah! Ameen.

Productivity is gauged by how much one will produce results. Think about it – during school, you had to produce homework, quizzes, participation, etc. Now that summer has come, what will you produce to make sure you have a productive day?

Imam Ibn Al-Jawzee (rahimuhullah) said, “Know, that days are but hours, and hours are but breaths, and every soul is a container, hence let not any breath pass without any benefit, such as on the Day of Judgement you find an empty container and feel regret!”

Think of something that you can do that will be beneficial – if you were dead or alive by the end of tomorrow, would the world be any different. Are you taking in more than the amount that you are giving? If so, try changing that and make a positive change. If you get thirty of your friends to promise to do just one extra productive act, that’s more than 1800 productive acts that the world has just benefited from just your efforts, Insha’Allah. And that’s just us and not including the friends and family that we can inspire to benefit as well Bi’idhnillah.

So the question is, before your head hits the pillow at night every night, what is it that you can do?

• Can you donate at least a dollar or two to the Masjid?
• Can you sweep a floor in a room of the Masjid or clean a window, bathroom, or classroom?
• Can you sit down with your siblings and read Qur’an or remember Allah together?
• Can you call up a relative or friend that you didn’t talk to for a long time and you just want to catch up?
• Can you write a small article on your reflections on life and share it with others?
• Can you write a piece of poetry or spoken word or Nasheed to inspire others?
• Can you organize a sports game/tournament for Muslims to come together?
• Can you design a flyer for someone who needs it?
• Can you write a letter to a newspaper decrying acts of genocide taking place against oppressed Muslims?
• Can you go through the neighborhood and mow the lawn of an elderly neighbor for free?
• Can you go to the Masjid office and volunteer your time there?
• Can you have a Dawah booth at a public place and pass out flyers and brochures?
• Can you help your mom or dad with a daily chore that you normally won’t help with?
• Can you make a Ramadan schedule and try finishing reading the Qur’an before the month begins?
• Can you make a YouTube video showing how it’s like to be Muslim?
• Can you organize Halaqahs or get-together parties at your house once a month?

…Can you try being productive? Insha’Allah, I’m very sure we all can.

I’m sure you can come up with 20x more creative and awesome ideas than the ones up there, but it should at least be a start. Let’s try doing at least one productive act for this summer, and encourage others to do so. By doing this, we can have a real impact in our communities bi’idhnillah.

But perhaps we need to share the joy. With words, we can have the hearts soar with joy or cry in despair. With words, we can influence or depreciate.

It’s a huge responsibility, and that is perhaps why people do not wish to publish publicly. But perhaps that is exactly why the need is created to publish. It perhaps becomes necessary to share our memories so that others may share our moments of sheer joy and despair, so that they can gain a wealth of knowledge that would have otherwise been impossible to acquire.

I see people every day that seem to lead very lonely lives.

I myself felt very lonely when I had first left Hifzh School because I had left my closest friend of 10+ years. It was an extremely different time and the only one way that I had stayed sane was because I would have [one-sided] conversations with him as I experienced my first year of college.

Now, as I transferred to another college, this friend and I have been reunited. All the thoughts of the prior year came pouring out, and I now feel my sanity slowly seeping back.

But at the same time, apart.

Now, I had finally got my closest friend back but it’ll never be the same because I have learned to talk and debate with myself.

I guess everybody must feel that someday as they are forced to let go of their childhood friends. When they literally rediscover them, they become close but they represent the past.

The present lies with your thinking and faith. Your friends complement that.

But the future may be with your partner of marriage. lol.

It was memory after memory that came rushing back to me as I walked down the stairs and said Salaam to my former class and to the teacher with whom I had, Alhamdulillah, also finished the Qur’an with. As I sat down and waited for Ali to begin, friend after friend started to arrive. Why? Because they too heard of another Hafidh joining the ranks and they came to be a part of it. These friends represented the various generations of Hifzh School and now they had come together for the 28th Hafidh from Al-Huda School Masha’Allah.

Why do I mention all of this? Well, first of all, it’s always good news when a Muslim finishes the Qur’an and is a very noteworthy incident indeed. But this event, in particular, was very significant because so many people came from their various colleges and occupations. Friends from various Masaajid and universities took a break from their schedules and came down to hear the recital of the Qur’an and it was a moment that filled me with great happiness and sadness. The lyrics of Ghurabaa, a famous poem sung by Saad Al-Ghamdi, quickly rushed to mind:

“كم تذاكرنا زمانا نحن يوم كنّا سعداء ,بكتاب الله نتلوه صباحا أو مساءا” – “How many times we remembered a time when we were happy / In the book of Allah, we recite in the morning and the evening / Ghurabaa….”

There was not a single friend in there that did not reminisce about old times and the several memories attached to the Hifzh School. Sometimes we get so caught up with other projects and new developments that we forget about our previous experiences and all the good that came as a direct result of that…

One day, my father came into the house solemnly and went very quietly to my mother. A few minutes later, my mother was crying with my father was trying to comfort her. I found out that my maternal grandmother passed away.

My grandmother…had passed away.

As I thought of her life, I reflected on how much it had changed all those around her. Before I was born, my grandmother was once sleeping and suddenly woke up. She saw the time and thought she missed Asr. She was so suddenly shocked that she suffered her first stroke only because she thought she missed a prayer. A few years later, she fell very severely, became paralyzed from the neck down and was unable to utter any words.

Except for two words… Alhamdulillah and Al-Amin.

People would always tell me about miracles, but this was a personal one. She couldn’t say anything but these two words and they were only praising Allah and His Prophet. The amazing thing is that this wasn’t for only a year or two, but for twelve years. Imagine if you had nothing but good coming out of your mouth for more than 4,380 days…

When I was younger and would visit her in Bangladesh, I always felt a special affinity to her and while others would be in the living room or shopping, I would sit beside her bed and play on my own with her beside me. She couldn’t move, nor talk (except when she needed something and would then say the two phrases), but I felt a special peace when I sat beside her bed.

Once, I went to a relative’s house and as they had no television or computers, they humored us in the old way – they gave us clay and taught us how to make special objects. To this day, I still remember how to make a clay rose and I remember when I successfully made my first one. I triumphantly presented it to my grandmother and she put on the widest smile on her face. And it is this wide smile that is etched in my mind and heart after all these years…

It was times like these when she would broadly smile that I would feel very happy. When our vacation in Bangladesh was over, everybody was weeping (which in itself is amazing because of the amount of love they had for us even though we’ve been with them for such a short time), but nobody’s sadness was greater than my grandmother – she cried all day and night and I felt tremendous guilt washing over me for leaving her in such a state. We went to the airport, very sad and crushed, but were told by the officials that our flight was canceled until the next day. We rushed home, ecstatic, and the first thing I did when we reached home was to dash to my grandmother’s side. She was still crying but when she looked up and saw me, she smiled a smile that I have never seen before; it was the most genuine and heartfelt smile I had ever seen…

For her last 12 years, she never said anything other than Alhamdulillah and Al-Amin, except once. It may seem like a fiction romance story, but I assure you, it’s real and was witnessed by others. When my father came to propose for my mother, all the men were in the living room while my mother was with my grandmother. She was feeling very sad because my grandmother was ailing and didn’t want to leave her in such a state. To her surprise, my grandmother uttered her only words (other than the usual ones) in more than a decade: “Marry him for he is a good man and will be perfect for you.” My mother screamed in shock, and others ran to the room to see what happened. When begged to say more, my grandmother simply said, “Alhamdulillah.”

And it was in such a state that I, her grandson, as well as many others ever saw her. Even though she lost her power of movement and speech, she would never complain and would only spend her days and nights praising Allah and His Messenger. May Allah (subhanahu wa ta’ala) forgive all her past sins, shower her with Mercy, and give her Jannatul Firdaus. Ameen…

“When I looked in the mirror, he was tumbling in the air, just flying,” Evans said. “I can see it as clearly as if it was happening in front of me right now.”

Colorfast mental snapshots of horror, a sense of overwhelming helplessness, sympathy and sometimes anger — these are the aftershocks that engineers and subway train operators report from their special perch as unwilling agents of sudden death.”

Imagine yourself, witnessing a murder happening in front of your eyes, and there is nothing that you can do. Now imagine all those around you that are following the wrong path and are destined for Hell if they don’t change – are you in that same sense of hopelessness?

“Metro’s wide windshields are designed to maximize the engineer’s view. Unfortunately, that means train operators see tragedy unfold with widescreen clarity, a high-def horror they never forget.”

What better maximization do we have other than our eyes in which we get a full view of everything happening in front of us? We have become so used to seeing murder scenes, hearing reports of the amount of dead people in a war or earthquake, reading tallying scores of dead people on Facebook and Twitter, but yet, our feelings of sadness have ebbed away. Why do we no longer feel the ‘high-def’ horror of seeing someone practicing another religion other than Islam and paving their way towards Hell? Have we become so desensitized?

“…the flip side of not being responsible is the devastating feeling of not be able to do anything in the moments before impact. The driver of a car might at least have the option of swerving out of the way or slamming on the brakes. The driver of a train doesn’t steer, and it can take a half-mile or more to stop. Evans has conditioned himself not to hit the emergency brake, a futile gesture more likely to injure passengers or derail the train than protect the person out front.”

Have we had previous experiences that no matter how much we tried, our attempts were futile? Because of this, we just stopped hitting ‘the emergency brake’ and stopped calling people to Islam? This really shouldn’t be the case because we never know when someone will become Muslim and come back to the Straight Path.

“The operator’s sense of helplessness can be worse when the person on the tracks doesn’t actually want to die.”

Sometimes we see people that really don’t believe in their religion and are looking for a way out. However, a circumstance wouldn’t allow them, maybe because of family or perhaps because of cainotophobia (fear of change)? Prophet Muhammad (salAllahu alayhi wa sallam) experienced this when Abu Talib refused to accept Islam because of his forefathers, so it definitely did happen. However, like the Prophet, we got to do as much as we can in hard times like those.

We’re not as hopeless as these train engineers that can’t do anything when a murder’s about to happen. Alhamdulillah, Allah (subhanahu wa ta’ala) gave us much more freedom to do something. We have a full view of the way people are living their lives and may sometimes feel a sense of hopelessness. But get over it. The Prophet did, and ended up making the whole of Arabia Muslim and the 1.5 billion Muslims now. Go help a Da’wah initiative. Be a true ambassador of Islam. You have potential to make somebody Muslim, so live up to that potential.

May Allah (subhanahu wa ta’ala) guide us, guide all those around us, and bring us together in Jannatul Firdaus. Ameen…

How do we vent then? We have the Prophetic advice that if we were angry standing up, then we should sit down. If we were angry sitting down, then we should lay down. We should also make Wudu’ and say A’udhoo bIllahi minash Shaitaanir Rajeem. In addition to this, I also recommend:

1. Get away from people fast – You will do something stupid if someone says even the least provocative tease – get away from people and stay only with yourself. It’s better for you to break an object than for you to break a heart.

2. Vent creatively – Use your anger for something beneficial. Muslims are among the most emotional people and we easily get riled up at rallies and other events. The downside of it, of course, is that this riling up tends to disappear quickly, so make use of the anger. Instead of ranting to thin air, rant to the major ranking newspapers that make your mind “boil with anger” (an accurate description of the feeling of anger in my opinion).

3. Stay quiet. If you can’t leave everyone (or even if you leave everyone), stay quiet because when one is angry, the worst tarnations tend to come out. One can go to Hell Fire just by an extra word derogatory word. It would really suck if that was due to an angry moment, much less a “pious angry” moment.

May Allah help us to stay away from anger and keep us on His Straight Path. Ameen…

“Masha’Allah, he is so mature,” someone said to me, concerning another friend.

When he said that, I got to thinking on what made that friend of mine decidedly so mature as opposed to the rest of the crowd. I realized it was that he would talk less than the rest of us.

If that is what maturity is about, please forget it. My opinion, as of many people, is that maturity means that you are serious when it’s time to be serious and you joke around when it’s time to joke around. I know many that are very mature  – people that stay up late at night just thinking and contemplating. However, among their own people, they are easygoing and companionable. Are they immature for doing this? In reality, it is these people that are affecting the hearts of the people much more than the reserved and ‘mature’ people.

Stop judging people just based on their appearance. There is much more than one meets the eye in people.

- Immature Ranter,

Arif Kabir